The Dallas daily herald. [volume] (Dallas, Tex.) 1873-1887, 1887-05-11

Translated tor The Cincinnati En-
qairer from the French of De Boisgo
hey, by L. c. Waggener.
After dinner we took our coffee upon
the terrace of the chateau. Twilight
had fallen and rising moon began to
light up softly a landscape wonderfully
pleasing to the eye, wood of oaks to
the left, a garden of Towering heath
and boundless eXpanse of sky. The
General holding an enormous cigar be-
tween his teeth, sent forth great mouth
fuls and clouds of ordorous vapor that
mounted to the heavens in blush spr-
ais His wife, seated beside him, rolled
n cigarette; we were all smoking, in
fact, but nobody spoke.
This wife of the General. fully fifteen
years younger than her husband, was
STILL A VERY BEAUTIFUL woMAS.
And more than one of us envied the
lot of the old soldier, though we really
knew nothing about him, save what
all knew. that he was rich, n gentle
man and had served calamity up to
the time he had received serious
wound at the siege of Paris, and been
forced TO take his retreat. We knew
this, / say, but nothing more. He had
bought the chateau soon after the war,
but had occupied it only six months,
and, as this was the first time we had
been honored with an invitation to be-
come his guests. we were naturally n
little timid.
At last, however. the doctor of the
canton, in other days a surgeon in the
Army of Africa, venturod to break the
silence by asking the General to tell us
of campaigns, or at least one of those
little military episodes which so aid
digestion. He demurred at first, but
after interrogating his wife with a
glance, to which she responded with an
encouraging smile, he thus began:
Gentlemen, have any of you ever
eaten rabbit curred with olives?
No, you have notp Well, l am not
astonished. 1t is dish of which French
cooks have never had the recipe, but |
possess it, and with your permission
will tell you where and how | learned
it, 1t dates far back, before | had been
under fire for the first time.
"On graduating from st. Cyr," con-
tinued the General, Il had at the out
set chance to enter the Zouaves, and
debarked at Algicrs month before the
first expedition to Kabyle, for at the
the time our Colonel did not go very
far into the enemy's country. Never
theless, he
FRETTED HIMSELF CONTINUALLY,
To give a lesson to a certain tribe OF
Flissas that perched in the heart of the
mountains, some fifteen leagues above
Algers, and finally the order was given,
despite the knowledge that these
savages would fight like devils or mad
men, and that the position would be
hard to break up. A beautiful debut
for sous. Lieutenant of twenty years,
and was not at all joyous ut the pros
pect, perpetually asking myself what
effect the whistlng of the balls would
have upon me- Still, curious as | was
to know what this effect would be, |
was not at all anxious to try it.
"Our first affair engaged us on the
border of a river which we called the
User, and which we were forced to
cross with the water to our shoulders
and the Kabyles firing upon us from a
distance. The balls from their long
flint guns passed directly above our
heads with music like the singing of
flutes. But while they were firing at
us in this harmless fashion we unex-
pectedly caught them in the plain with
a troup of cavalry, and it was truly a
comical sight to see them run before
our Spahis, who, without giving them
selves the trouble TO saber them out
right, seized them by the tops of their
burnous. and, raising them as you
would raise n glove, left the victim on
the earth all naked. Decidedly l said
to myself, this war is very amusing
thing
"The next day however, we had to
fight again; the Flissas had mounted TO
the crest of the mountains, and there
awaited us. We bivouacked for the